ITO SEIU (1882-1961) Scene from a Kabuki Play
Showa era (1926-1989)
Showa era (1926-1989)
£10,000 - £15,000
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Find your local specialistITO SEIU (1882-1961)
Showa era (1926-1989)
Kakejiku (hanging scroll), ink and colours on silk in striped silk mounts with prominent jikusaki (scroll ends) made from frost-marked kanchiku bamboo, depicting the merchant Echigo Shinsuke cutting down the geisha Miyokichi at the Edo (Tokyo) Fukagawa Hachiman Festival in a scene from a kabuki play (see below), signed and sealed at lower right Seiu; with wood tomobako storage box inscribed Hachiman matsuri yomiya no nigiwai Seiu ga (Mayhem on the Eve of the Hachiman Festival, Painted by Seiu). Overall: 178cm x 61cm (70 1/8in x 24in); image: 140.7cm x 50.8cm (55 3/8in x 19 15/16in) (2).
Footnotes
In a climactic scene from the kabuki play named on the storage box for this scroll (see above), the merchant Echigo Shinsuke slays the beautiful Miyokichi, whom he had previously rescued from drowning in the Sumida River during the collapse of the Eitai Bridge from the weight of people crossing to attend the Fukagawa Hachiman Festival (a historical event that took place in 1807). Shinsuke pawned his goods to raise the funds needed to buy out Miyokichi's contract as a geisha but when she rejected him he went on a killing spree, eventually cutting her down. Shortly afterwards, he discovered that she was in fact his sister. The play premiered in 1860 and was frequently depicted in woodblock prints that provided Seiu with some of the imagery seen in this dramatic visual retelling of the tale, although the murder had previously been shown as being perpetrated on a boat rather than in the precincts of the Hachiman Shrine.
Ito Seiu was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo and received a varied artistic education in metalwork, ivory carving, painting and later sculpture. He started his career as a newspaper illustrator but is best known as the 'father of bondage painting', for which he used as a model Sahara Kise (later his second wife); he also painted violent and ghostly scenes from the Edo period. He fell foul of government censors during the 1930s and much of his work was destroyed during the Tokyo air raids of spring 1945; his surviving paintings are rare.